Foreshadowing Firearms

This post might have been written on time, but I went to a concert on Wednesday. Bad Wolves, Breaking Benjamin, and Five Finger Death Punch (click links for musics). Totally worth it to get tickets down on the floor, by the way.

But anyway, we're here to talk about writing. 

You may have heard of Chekhov's Gun. It's a… I don't know, a rule, that says, "If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there."

Basically, if you bother mentioning a thing, it should be important at some point. I have, so far, violated this in my eldritch horror story. I wrote a random line about a thing, in a place, that sounded like it might come back later, possibly to kill someone in a Final Destination style accident. And then it never happened. The characters are no longer at that location, and may never return.

This got me thinking about an incredibly frustrating story I'd like to try someday. It would be Chekhov's Armory, without any of Chekhov's Ammunition. So all these things would get introduced, as though they were going to be important later on, but then never were. Like a horror movie I saw once, where every scene felt like it was leading up to a jump scare, but none did. It's, frankly, a terrible way to write a story. The whole thing feels pointless, like what was any of that for.

What might be more successful is to have all the elements come into play in the very last scene, where some Rube Goldberg sort of shenanigans culminate in something dramatic. That could be fun.

As usual, I'm just coming up with random ideas instead of working on the thing I'm supposed to be working on. You know how it goes.

Back to the spirit of Chekhov's Gun, the only including of relevant things, I think that might be at the heart of how I write, anyway. Generally speaking, I'll only include things if they matter, to the detriment of things like description and world building.

I mean, if everyone in the world has brown eyes, but my character has green, then I'm going to mention it. Otherwise, I don't see the point in basic character description like that. It might be because I tend to forget things like that when I'm reading. Say you have three central characters, one with blue eyes, one with green, one with brown, and then you say something about "the blue-eyed boy." Chances are, I'm going to forget who you're referring to, unless you have some other kind of identifier, like he speaks with a phonetic southern accent, in which case, you didn't need the eye thing anyway. You see what I mean? It's not relevant information. So why include it?

Since I'm eventually getting back to working on The Long Road, I'll use that as an example. I know what the three main characters look like. I can picture them. But I don't think they were really described at any point. Andrea is mentioned to have blonde hair in a ponytail about halfway through, when the boys were looking for her, and that's it.

It's well known, my lack of ability to describe things. I could go on and on. I probably have.

But anyway, can you imagine a story in which a variety of seemingly unrelated things are brought up, and they somehow have to all fit together in the end. Like, a rubber band, some nail clippers, a half-eaten Reuben, a Neil Diamond album, and the word "Quebecois." I'm not going to write that story, not right now, because it makes my brain hurt, but what a fun challenge.

I'll see you Wednesday.